Under Article 48 of Regulation (EU) 2023/1542, an economic operator placing a battery on the EU market must adopt and implement a battery due diligence policy covering the supply chain of four raw materials: cobalt, lithium, natural graphite and nickel. It is not the battery passport, it is not the carbon footprint declaration, and it does not share their dates. This guide covers who it binds, what the policy has to contain, why the deadline moved to , and what it means upstream for suppliers who will never read the regulation.
What battery due diligence actually is
Due diligence here is a company-level obligation, not a product one. Where the passport describes a battery, the due diligence policy describes how the company knows where its raw materials came from and what it did about the risks it found. The model is the familiar one from responsible-minerals work: identify the chain, assess the risks in it, act on them, verify, and disclose.
The regulation splits the risks into two families. Social risks cover human rights, human health and safety of persons, occupational health and safety, and labour rights. Environmental risks cover water use, soil protection, air pollution, climate change and biodiversity, as well as the protection of community life. A policy that addresses one family and not the other is not a policy under this article.
Who it binds — and the threshold that gets lost
The duty falls on the economic operator placing the battery on the Union market. As with the rest of the regulation, that is the importer, the manufacturer selling into the EU, or the brand — not the cell producer three tiers upstream, who is nonetheless where the data has to come from.
The exemption sits in Article 47, one article before the obligation itself, and it is a two-part test rather than a number. The wording defines the exempt operator as one "that had a net turnover of less than EUR 40 million in the financial year preceding the last financial year, and that are not part of a group, consisting of parent and subsidiary undertakings, which, on a consolidated basis, exceeds the limit of EUR 40 million".
Both halves matter, and each catches people differently. The first is a lagging measure, so the year you are trading in is not the year that decides. The second is where the exemption is usually lost: a small EU import entity inside a larger group does not qualify on its own size. Settle this with whoever consolidates your accounts, not by reading the headline number and stopping.
A further category is on its way. The Commission proposed in May 2025 (COM(2025) 501 final) to extend the exemption to "small mid-cap" companies below €150 million in turnover. On 9 June 2026 Parliament and Council negotiators provisionally agreed to raise that threshold to €200 million. Until the amending regulation is formally adopted and published in the Official Journal, it is not law, and the €40 million test above is the one that applies.
The four raw materials
| Raw material | Where it sits in a battery | Why the chain is hard to see |
|---|---|---|
| Cobalt | Cathode | Artisanal and small-scale mining enters the chain before the refiner, where visibility usually starts |
| Lithium | Cathode, electrolyte | Brine and hard-rock routes differ entirely in their environmental profile |
| Natural graphite | Anode | Concentrated processing; synthetic graphite is a different material with a different chain |
| Nickel | Cathode | Class 1 and Class 2 supply routes diverge, and only one leads to batteries |
The list is closed — these four and no others. It is worth reading that as a scoping instruction rather than a limitation: the work is to see four chains properly, not every material in the bill of materials.
What the policy has to contain
Four components, in the order they are usually built:
- A management system. The policy written down, ownership assigned, chain-of-custody records kept, and supplier engagement documented. This is the part that exists on paper before anything else does.
- Risk management. Identifying the risks in the two families above, then acting on them — which means a plan with dates, not a register that records the risk and stops.
- Third-party verification. The policy is verified independently, not self-declared. Verifier availability was one of the industry concerns behind the postponement, which is an argument for booking capacity early rather than near the date.
- Disclosure. The policy and its results are made available, which is what turns an internal document into something a customer or an authority can act on.
The timeline, and why it moved
| Date | What | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 18 August 2025 | Original application date for the due diligence obligations | Superseded |
| 30 July 2025 | Regulation (EU) 2025/1561 published, postponing them | In force |
| 26 July 2026 | Rescheduled deadline for the Commission's guidelines | Deadline passed |
| Due diligence obligations apply | Binding | |
| Battery passport becomes mandatory — a different obligation | Binding |
The postponement came through the Omnibus IV simplification package and moved the date by two years. Two things follow from reading it as breathing room rather than a reprieve. First, the passport lands earlier — February 2027 — so a battery company gets the harder-looking obligation first and the company-level one six months later. Second, the reason given for the delay was partly the availability of accredited verification bodies, and a queue that was too short in 2025 does not get shorter when everyone arrives in 2027.
This is not the battery passport
The confusion is worth naming directly, because the two are routinely treated as one project and they are not.
| Battery passport | Due diligence policy | |
|---|---|---|
| What it describes | A product | A company's sourcing |
| Legal hook | Article 77 | Article 48 |
| Applies from | ||
| Deliverable | A record reachable by QR code | A verified, disclosed policy |
| Who it exempts | Nobody in scope by product type | Operators below the turnover threshold |
Our battery passport guide covers the first column. Preparing it does not prepare the second: a complete passport can sit on top of a supply chain nobody has assessed.
Walkthrough: an e-bike battery importer
A representative scenario. A company imports light means of transport battery packs into the EU for e-bikes, assembles nothing itself, and has €55 million in net turnover — above the threshold, and it checked at group level rather than entity level.
Month one — scoping. The four materials are traced as far as the current records allow. Cobalt and nickel stop at the cell manufacturer, which will not name its refiners under the existing contract. Lithium stops at the same point. Graphite turns out to be synthetic in two of the three cell models, which changes what the chain even is.
Month two — the contract problem. The gap is not analytical, it is commercial: nothing in the supply agreement obliges the cell manufacturer to disclose upstream. Renegotiating that clause is the actual project, and it moves at the speed of the next contract cycle rather than the compliance calendar.
Months three to five — building the system. Policy drafted, ownership assigned to a named person, chain-of-custody records defined, risk register built against both risk families with dates attached to the actions. Verification is booked at month three, not month eight.
The counterfactual. Suppose the company had read the €40 million figure, seen its own entity turnover of €12 million, and concluded it was exempt. The group-level assessment would have surfaced at the first customer audit — or worse, at verification, with no policy, no records and a supply agreement that gives it no right to ask. The two years the postponement bought would have been spent, and the clause that takes a contract cycle to change would still be unchanged.
Edge cases
Batteries inside products. If you place an appliance, a power tool or an e-bike on the market, you are placing its battery on the market. The obligation follows the battery, not the product category you think you are in.
Synthetic versus natural graphite. Only natural graphite is named. If your anode uses synthetic, that specific chain is out of scope — but you need the data to demonstrate which one you use, which is itself a supply-chain question.
Group structure. The threshold is where most of the argument happens. Entity turnover is the number people quote; group turnover is the number that decides.
Second life and remanufacturing. A battery re-placed on the market is placed on the market. Who the economic operator is in that transaction is worth settling before the transaction, not after.
Recycled content. Recycled material does not remove a material from scope. It changes what the chain looks like and who is in it.
Zoom out: the border is becoming a data checkpoint
Battery due diligence is not an isolated rule; it is one instance of the same turn that produced the passport, the deforestation regulation's due diligence statements and the wider corporate sustainability duties. The pattern is consistent: obligations that used to be satisfied by a declaration are now satisfied by evidence, and the evidence has to come from further up the chain than the obliged company can see today.
For a supplier, that is the practical read. You will not be named in Article 48, and you will still answer it — as sourcing declarations, smelter and refiner disclosure and new clauses in purchase agreements, arriving about a year after the passport questions did. The companies that found this comfortable were the ones who had already built the habit for something else. Our guide for manufacturers outside the EU covers how that pressure travels, and the ESPR guide covers the framework the rest of it sits in.
Frequently asked questions
What is battery due diligence under the EU Battery Regulation?
When do the battery due diligence obligations apply?
Which companies are exempt from battery due diligence?
Is battery due diligence the same as the battery passport?
Does the due diligence policy need third-party verification?
What should a supplier expect from its customers before 2027?
Sources
- — Updated: the small mid-cap extension proposed in COM(2025) 501 final was provisionally agreed by Parliament and Council on 9 June 2026; it is not law until it is adopted and published in the Official Journal.
